The First Herpes Vaccine Is Underway

Did you know that herpes is actually very common? According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention nearly 770,000 people in America are infected with this STD every year! The reason being, the two strains of herpes (HSV-1, the oral kind, which appears as cold sores, and HSV-2, the genital kind) is so easily spread. Skin to skin contact is all that is necessary, and therefore even condoms cannot always 100% protect you from it.

According findings published in the research journal eLife, a new vaccine that will be effective against both strains is underway. Scientists at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University deem the vaccination to be just as effective on the disease when it is in a dormant state within the body.

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“Developing a herpes vaccine is one of the holy grails of infectious disease research,” said co-study leader William Jacobs Jr., Ph.D., a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and the Leo and Julia Forchheimer Chair in Microbiology & Immunology at Einstein.